Category: Uncategorized

The media circus around Donald Trump has made it hard to separate hype from reality. There are 3 core questions that I see as central to any president, and 2 of them are fundamental for a leader in any position. More than just seeing yes or no answers, I would like to understand the reasoning people have behind their answers.

• Do you find him to be trustworthy and to possess integrity?
• Does he bring the competencies and skills as a leader that the office requires?
• Does he respect those democratic institutions and processes that have served this country throughout our history?

Time for some open-ended feedback from my readers. I understand that there is a lot of anger out there about the Obama presidency, but I must say that I don’t get it. I can understand disagreement with much of what he has done, but I can’t wrap my head around how so many people are so passionately opposed to him. This also ties in to the idea that I have seen often that he has represented a hard left turn in our national politics, and that is also something that does not make any sense to me. So for those of you who feel that way about him and his administration, please share your thoughts on why you feel that way and we will see if we can have a healthy discussion on where our country stands on the eve of the Trump administration.

 

My latest post is much shorter and oriented towards questions, to leave more emphasis on your responses. And to whomever is reading this, yes I mean YOU! I want to know what you think. Of course, my views can still be discerned to some degree through my questions, and I will gladly share more of my own perspective in response to any comments. Free free to pick and choose the questions for your response. They are meant only as a guide.

• How does opportunity for black people compare to opportunities for white people in the USA now?
• Have we achieved the goal of a color-blind society, in particular thinking of areas such as education, policing, housing, and employment?
• Do we do a good job of treating people on their own merits rather than judging them by the worst behaviors of people who share characteristics with them? Does that play out equally for people of different races?
• What are appropriate forms of protest to effectively draw attention to the societal inequalities that still exist?

If there’s one thing that I can’t explain
Is why the world has to have so much pain
With all the ways of communicating
We can’t get in touch with who we’re hating

…With all this uptight pushing and shoving
Keeps us away from who we’re loving (loving)

Grant Hart, Husker Du, “Turn on the News”, from Zen Arcade

Where do you get your news? How do you check the reliability of the information you are getting? What do you do to ensure you are getting varied perspectives? I’d like to know how you deal with this challenge as our options have changed substantially in recent years and the answers to these questions have a major impact on how we perceive the world around us. And please share specific sources that others may not know about that will help round out our perspectives. I know that while my own sources come from left and right, they definitely lean left and I could use more variety.

My process has evolved and keeps changing. My goals right now are to better support quality journalism in this era of free news, and to more deeply engage alternative viewpoints. Here are the key points of how I deal with the news.

• No tv news! It is far too sensationalized.
• Google News is my first option – it presents a wide range of varied sources with up to the minute content on any issue along with both straight reporting and editorials.
• I try to take any story I read the first time with a grain of salt until I have read the same story from a different perspective
• My goal is to get editorial content from many sources, including highly biased ones from both sides along with more centrist views.
• I have been using Facebook more to follow specific sources and see what my friends are posting. I am not paying for any of these at the moment, although I have in the past. My top sources include:
  • The Atlantic
  • Vox
  • The Economist
  • The American Conservative
  • The Washington Post
  • The New York Times
  • The Wall Street Journal
  • Fox News
  • The New Yorker
  • Comedic news shows (Daily Show, Last Week Tonight, Full Frontal)
  • Democracy Now!
  • Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi in particular
• New ones I am trying out include:
  • The Claremont Institute
  • Mother Jones
  • Dan Rather
  • George Will
  • Glenn Beck
  • Shaun King
• The mainstream media takes a lot of heat and is of course flawed, but the alternative sources that have been cropping up much more extensively also introduce a host of problems. I think it is important to use both mainstream and alternative sources. Alternative sources certainly at times break news you won’t find elsewhere
• I don’t typically turn to fact-checking sites, particularly if I can find agreement on facts from different sides, but I also find them extremely useful at times. Whether or not one agrees with their conclusions, they have usually done the research and provide primary sources to check out for yourself.